Today in History ^04/25/18

(404 BCE) Spartans rout the Athenians to win the Peloponnesian War

Raging for 27 years, the conflict between the city-state of Athens and the Peloponnesian League ends after Spartan leader Lysander destroys most of the Athenian fleet, and Athens finally surrenders. The war is over, as is the golden age of Greece.

The Peloponnesian War was an ancient Greek war fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first phase, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions of Attica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of the Peloponnese and attempt to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the destruction of the entire force, in 413 BC. This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this phase, Sparta, now receiving support from Persia, supported rebellions in Athens’ subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens’ empire, and, eventually, depriving the city of naval supremacy. The destruction of Athens’ fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved, but Sparta refused.

Start date: 431 BC
End date: 404 BC

The Alliances of the Peloponnesian War
wiki/Peloponnesian_War

4.9.a18

(404 BCE) Spartans rout the Athenians to win the Peloponnesian War.
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